Dorn on Searches

by Cliopatria

Sherman Dorn has a fascinating post--with which I completely agree--on possible ways to guard against intellectual uniformity in department searches.

Dorn offers two suggestions: (1) Conducting external reviews of assistant-professor candidate pools, modeled on the procedures used when candidates go up for tenure, in which outside reviewers would take a look at the qualifications of the final pool, those who just missed the cut, and a random sampling of the rest of the applicants: and (2) using target of opportunity lines to promote pedagogical diversity as well as the more traditional types of diversity for which TOA lines currently are used.

Both seem to me to be great ideas. They share a common element: administrative willingness to proactively promote intellectual diversity and to devote financial resources to the cause, recognizing that faculty self-governance and a prudent system of checks and balances need not be irreconcilable. To my knowledge, there isn't one institution in the country that gives departments the sole power to make tenure decisions--there's a recognition that some internal check needs to exist. The same principle should apply to the hiring process. Without some outside pressure from campus administrations, there's no reason to believe that intellectually uniform departments will suddenly decide to change their ways.

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Jonathan Dresner - 6/28/2005

Well, my first (and on rereading, not terribly relevant) criticism was about the overlap between this proposal and the existence of outside members on hiring committees. As Mr. Dorn said in his reply, outside members are subject to terrible pressures of collegiality: I've been an outside member, and I know how hard it is to make much of a difference even when you're reasonably well respected by the rest of the committee.

My second problem was with the value of post-hire review: it could produce interesting data (except that hires -- qualifications and preferences, pools -- are quirky events) but nothing will come of it unless administrators will enforce some kind of sanction or correction. Honestly, I'm not sanguine about either the will of most administrators to pull that trigger.

Mr. Dorn suggested that the sanction could be an expansion of outside committee members, up to and including entirely losing control of hires to outside committees. The departmental dynamics that would result are terrible to contemplate: contract renewal and tenure reviews would have to be controlled outside the department, and any feedback from within the department would have to be discounted.... the odds of a pariah, or a deeply split department, would be very high.

Finally, there's the question of who controls the outside review process. Administrators usually come from the faculty, who are supposedly the problem. Human Resource officers are barely able to keep track of race and gender: I've never met one I thought would be up to the task. Plus, there's the self-identification issue.

Sherman Jay Dorn - 6/28/2005

Thanks for letting the world know that I have wild fantasies of being Komissar of Higher Ed when I donate blood.

More seriously, Jonathan Dresner has some interesting criticisms of the outside-review idea, in particular. (Jonathan, want to repeat them here?)